Customer Reviews

Joshua Tree: The Complete Guide

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book provides great ideas for trips within the park for any user. I spent 5 days climbing in JTree but enjoyed finding out from the book what the Joshua tree actually is and going on a hike to see some petroglyphs. The photographs are very vivid and the campground maps are very useful (although an overall map with the campground locations would be useful too).

An excellent book with great photographs. It is organized very well. The author's love of the park comes through and is very inspiring.

National Park guides are tough because it can be hard to find one that is able to provide the right amount of information you may want on wildlife, hiking trails, campgrounds, fauna, birdwatching, weather, nice photographs, and, this case, rock climbing. For the number of pages and the price, this book strikes an excellent balance on all these items. The maps, in particular, provided both macro- and micro- views of the Park. It was also logically organized so it was easy to refind items. Finally, it included two fine hikes (Inspiration Point and a spur hike to some ruins) that we could not have possibly found without the book.

My only complaint was the binding. The cover of the book fell off after two days of moderate handling. A shame, since the map on the inside cover was one of the most helpful.

I am an avid hiker / mountain climber and have been making frequent stops to the Joshua Tree area the last few years. In the past I could not find out where the best camping was or what the best trails were to explore. After reading Mr. Kaiser's book, my eyes have been opened to wonders and beauty of Joshua Tree National Park. I had been missing out for years on everything the park has to offer. I consider myself a fairly decent photographer and love to take snap shots of my travels. Kaiser has some of the most awe inspiring photographs you will ever see. What is a fantastic idea is that Kaiser sells his photographs on his website for very low price and they are absolutely the best quality. I told my wife I took one of the pictures I purchased from Kaiser. She loved it and framed it in our living room. She has even stopped given me a hard time about buying so much camera equipment!

Joshua Tree: The Complete Guide truly is the "Complete Guide". I rate this book far beyond the best travel guides I have ever read.

This book has beautiful pictures and really interesting insights on what the best trails are. We loved the ones we chose based on the guide. It worked perfectly for us during our two-day trip to Joshua Tree National Park.

This book is it. As an avid hiker, camper, and all around outdoorsman, I've used a lot of different guides, but this one takes it. Between the photos, the extra chapters on local history, ecology etc., not to mention one of the easiest to use trail guides I've seen, I'm set on Destination Press as my guide of choice. Mr. Kaiser has made my outdoor adventures that much more enjoyable.

I loved this book. Superbly written and full of interesting facts and history. I have been to Joshua about 4-5 times and absolutely love it, and now armed with this book I am looking forward to going back. Great pictures, narrative and real life experiences make this book a must have!

JOSHUA TREE THE COMPLETE GUIDE 4th edition, by James Kaiser, is a 215 page book on Joshua Tree National Park. All of the pages are on high-quality glossy paper. Essentially every single page contains a photograph. Most of them are in color, except for archival photos of gold miners and ruffians, previously associated with the Joshua Tree National Park region. The reproductions of the color photos are razor-sharp.

There are eight chapters: (1) Adventures; (2) Basics; (3) Nearby towns; (4) Geology; (5) Ecology and wildlife; (6) History; (7) Mojave Desert; and (8) Sonoran Desert. Basically, the park occurs in two halves, the west half (Sonoran half) which has most of the Joshua trees, and the east half (Mojave half) which has the cholla garden and ocotillo plants.

The graphic art in the book is excellent, apparently done with Photoshop. For example, the 2-page map on pages 10-11 has thumbnail color photos of the best areas on the map, e.g., cholla cactus garden, Lost Palms Oasis, and Ryan Mountain. Many of the pages have text on white background with an object, such as a blooming yucca (page 65), jack rabbit (page 82), or Cahuilla basketry (page 90), stripped of its original background, and planted in a white area on the page next to the text.

Getting to the heart of the matter, artistic and thoughtful photos of Joshua trees or forests thereof, are disclosed on pages 4, 6-8, 19-20 (Joshua trees in the snow), 22, 54, 62-64, 108, 120-122, 136-137, 139, 140, 173 (Joshua trees victim to fire). The book also lovingly documents rock formations, and there are many in the park. These are found on pages 9, 12-15, 24, 46, 49, 50-51 (schematic diagram showing 4-step process lasting millions of years, where a plume of magma eventually becomes an interesting stack of exposed boulders), 60, 120-121, 126 ("The Trojan), 127, 130-133, 136, 138, 139 ("Cap Rock"), 150-151, 153 ("Balance Rock"), 155 (tafoni), 160-161 ("Skull Rock"), 162, 163 ("Split Rock"), 169, 190, 191 ("Arch Rock").

Despite the thorough documentation of various Joshua trees and rock formations, the first thing on my agenda, when I visit the part, is cholla cactus garden, located right in the middle of the park. This naturally occurring garden is shown on pages 196-197.

Regarding the writing style, the book dives right into each of the topics with the detailed familiarity that might be expected from a college professor's writing. The author never decorates his writing with nebulous gushings, and never drives off into irrelevant topics. In the 30-page chapter (pages 88-117) on the political history of Joshua Tree National Park, we read about Minerva Hoyt. Here is an excerpt, "Among the most concerned was a wealthy Pasadena widow named Minerva Hoyt . . . on her trips to the desert, Hoyt witnessed first hand the ecological damage that was being done. She took an active role in educating citizens about desert ecosystems . . . Hoyt was elected president of the newly organized Desert Conservation League . . . but when Hoyt approached the National Park Service with her idea, she ran headfirst into a legal and bureaucratic nightmare. The boundaries in her proposal were checkered with existing mining claims and plots of privately owned land . . . in 1932 Franklin Roosevelt was elected President. Shortly thereafter, he introduced the New Deal, which was a boon to the National Park Service . . . Hoyt suddenly found herself with the perfect opportunity to promote a desert park." (pages 114-115)

In addition, there is a 2-page spread showing maps of campgrounds, lists of nearby restaurants with commentary on each one, several pages on local legends, and about 25-color photographs of individual wildflowers with their names, growth characteristics, and earlier use by Native Americans living in the area.

My opinion about this book can best be expressed by the following sentence: "ATTENTION AUTHORS, TAKE NOTE, THIS IS HOW TO WRITE A GUIDE BOOK."

Okay, so today (October 15, 2011), I visited this park for the first time. The most amazing thing is the uniformity of the joshua trees. Who ever heard of a forest where every single tree is exactly the same kind of tree???? That is what you find in Joshua Tree National Park. The next most amazing thing is the cholla garden. While you can see a few chollas here and there for the first few miles of road inside the park, these chollas are small and occur in isolation. From the 29 Palms entrance, the drive to the cholla garden is about ten miles. The asphalt roadway is in excellent condition and there are no potholes. After several miles into the park, your elevation will dip about 500 feet (my estimate) and with a couple of more miles of driving in the lower-elevation area, you get to the cholla garden. The cholla cacti are densely packed with cacti, where the cacti are like shoppers milling around a crowded open-air market. (The cholla are anthropomorphic, just as the Joshua trees are anthropomorphic. The cholla that I saw were two-toned, just like a dog that has two colors. The bottom half is green and the top half is black. Very weird, but also beautiful.

If your goal is to explore the cholla garden, I recommend wearing inexpensive rubber knee-high boots. Even if you try to be careful, the ground is littered with bulbous-like parts of the cholla, and they will brush against your pant cuffs or shoes. The barbs instantly dig into your skin. If you try to pull out the barbs, they rip your flesh, just like ripping out a small fish hook. I recommend that every visitor bring a small pair of needle-nosed pliers for removing the spines from your clothing and flesh. The cholla garden is NOT THE PLACE TO TAKE CHILDREN UNDER 14 YEARS OF AGE. Now regarding the higher elevations of the park, it seemed to me that Hidden Valley had the greatest concentrations of monoliths. The monoliths seem like medieval castles. The Hidden Valley area is like a village of medieval castles. Hidden Valley is actually a small area surrounded by cliffs, where the area has a circular nature trail. The small area is naturally-occurring botanical garden, almost equal in variety to what you'd expect in a municipal botanical garden or a university-run botanical garden. Don't miss this nature trail. It takes under an hour to complete.

Here is yet another update, based on my fourth visit to J.-Tree Nat'l. Park. I recommend the SPLIT ROCK trail. Although SPLIT ROCK trail has a very humble name, this trail takes you along various boulders that are tall monoliths. At one point, there two monoliths stand right next to each other, where one of them is balancing a 3-foot wide egg-shaped boulder. The monoliths are all about 15-20 feet tall. In my opinion, the SPLIT ROCK trail should be re-named, "SCULPTURE MUSEUM TRAIL." SPLIT ROCK trail is only a mile or so long, and it can be easily walked children. At the half-way point, there is a slope with several large cacti, the kind with fleshy green parts resembling ping-pong paddles.

If you're looking for a good travel guide to Joshua Tree National Park, look no further. James Kaiser writes with a keen eye and maintains a humorous, informative, upbeat tone throughout the one hundred or so pages that make up this travel guide.

The opening sections on desert wildlife are succinct yet detailed enough to draw you in without putting you to sleep. I had no idea the Yucca Moth was so interesting til I read about it in this book. And I can tell you quite a bit about the Joshua Tree and its unique physiology, too - not on account of the tree itself - but due to the concise engaging manner in which the author tackles his subject matter.

Kaiser's sensitivity to the history of Joshua Tree can be found on almost every page of this guide. Chapters devoted to the evolution of the park are fascinating as Kaiser discusses the development of the area from Mormons looking at strange trees in the desert to national monument to the final signing of legislation designating the region a national park in 1994 (Thanks, Clinton).

The author gets fairly involved in the hiker's perspective, too. As you read it becomes quickly apparent Kaiser has hiked every trail the park has to offer. If a trail is badly marked by the park service, he lets you know and guides you down the right path, pointing out important landmarks and helping you avoid dehydration and hours of discomfort along the way. This, by the way, comes in VERY handy should you be hiking through the park in the summertime where time is crucial and energy limited.

Lastly, Kaiser's take on pop-culture and the effect it has had upon visitors to Joshua Tree makes this more than simply a nature guide. A humorous, informative passage on U2 and its groundbreaking 80's album will answer any questions fans of the Irish rock group may have while visiting the park [Note to fans - The tree ain't here. It was located south of Vegas and died off years ago]. There's even a fascinating section on Graham Parsons and what became of his remains when loyal friends abducted his corpse and burned it (as per his wishes) at Cap Rock in 1973.

Sadly, Kaiser has only written a handful of travel guides, but if his volumes on Grand Canyon or Yosemite are anything like this, then I highly recommend this engaging travel writer's accounts of our majestic national parks.

This book is by far the best guide to Joshua Tree National Park. I visit Joshua Tree at least a couple times every year. It is one of my favorite places to visit here in California. Wether your visit is for a day to a weekend outing, this book covers everything you will need to know and learn about Joshua Tree. The layout is excellent. The book is filled with incredible photographs of all the top sites to see in the park, wildlife, plus several historical photographs. Besides covering popular sites in the park, this book gives you a history of the park as well. There is even a section that covers the wildlife and plant life in the park. There are very useful maps of the main campgrounds. For the hikes listed, each includes a beautiful photograph and a brief description. This book even lists a few places to eat outside the park in 29 Palms. For anyone planning to travel to Joshua Tree, this book is a must have.

Although this book covers all the most popular hiking trails and short excursions, it doesn't get into extreme detail about overnight backpacking in Joshua Tree. Besides this book, I highly recommend On Foot in Joshua Tree by Patty Furbush. Both these books are all you need to help you discover Joshua Tree National Park.